New Louis Armstrong Center showcases a life in music and a love for Queens

When people think about the iconic jazz musician Louis Armstrong, they tend to think about New Orleans, the city where he was born – and where jazz was born, too. That explains a question often posed to Ricky Riccardi, the director of research collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum, located in Corona, Queens.

“The No. 1 question we get at the Armstrong house is why is the Louis Armstrong Museum in Queens, not in New Orleans,” Riccardi said.

The answer is simple.

“By the time he died in 1971, he was a New Yorker,” Riccardi said. “Those years in New Orleans were the most important years of his life. They taught him about life, about race, about music, about women, about food, about everything. But once he got out, that was it – he was not going back.”

The museum opened in 2003, in the house of Lucille Armstrong, the trumpeter’s wife, purchased in 1943. This week, a new 14,000-square-foot expansion to the museum opens to the public, directly across the street from where the Armstrongs spent their final years.

Organizers said the Louis Armstrong Center will celebrate Armstrong’s life and role in music history with exhibitions, performances, talks and screenings. The center also hosts a 60,000-piece archival collection, explored in a permanent exhibition called “Here to Stay.”

“We are in the legacy of Louis and Lucille: They were two Black artists who owned their own home in the 1940s, who rose to mega-stardom,” said Regina Bain, the center’s executive director. “We honor that by telling their story. But we also honor that by living their values. They loved their neighborhood, they loved supporting the families and the students in their neighborhood, so we have to do the same.”